I want to give you a close look at what it costs to make money with adsense. I would like to start out by giving you the first complete look at the costs of all my sites and then going back over a couple items to help give a couple of more tips and extra info. As usual, be careful about skimming, I don’t want you to get only a part of the picture.

So, in no particular order here is the list of items to go over:

domain names–money sites
domain names–directories
hosting–money sites
hosting–directories
keyword research
instant article wizard pro
directory submission
ugc (user-generated content)

And here is the cost rundown:

domain names–money sites ($9.99 each/yr)
domain names–directories ($9.99 each/yr)
hosting–money sites ($49.99 total/mo)
hosting–directories ($3.95 each/mo)
keyword research–($59.00/mo)
instant article wizard pro–($27.00/mo)
directory submission–($110.32/one time–788 quality directories)
ugc–($37-$288/one time–100 posts to 1000 posts)

And the final tally (of the cost of my sites) at a one year look:

20 money site domain names at $9.99/yr = Estimated $200 / yr
4 directory site domain names at $9.99/yr = Estimated $40 / yr
20 money site hosting accounts at $49.99 total/mo = Estimated $600 / yr
4 directory site hosting accounts at $3.95 each/mo = Estimated $192 / yr
1 keyword research month for all 20 money sites at $59.00/mo (I only did research for one month = Estimated $60 / yr
1 instant article wizard pro software (for all my sites) = Estimated $324 / yr
4 directory submissions (one for each directory site) = Estimated $442 / yr
4 ugc sets of posts (one set for each directory site–at the low end) = Estimated $148 / yr

Total Estimated Annual Cost (for 20 Money Sites and 4 Directories): $2006
Total Estimated Monthly Cost (based on above annual cost/12): $168
Total Estimated Hourly Annual Cost: A Bunch of Freaking Hours

Now let me go over a couple of different things here. First and foremost, obviously, looking at the cost, you SHOULD NOT get into the adsense game if you are not going to be able to put time and money into your sites! That being said, the reason why I went into the ANNUAL cost of maintaining adsense sites is that the purchase of domain names (a one-time annual cost) lends all expenses to being looked at on an annual level.

Ideally, I would like to have about 50 money sites making me between $75 and $100 a day (roughly $2250-$3000/mo). What I’ve decided to do though, before I get at least 50 money sites, is to give the sites that I have now the attention they deserve to get them up to par. That means, up to par for 20 money sites would make $30-$40 a day (roughly $900-$1200/mo). Right now, I actually work with a guy that has 7 money sites making him roughly $200 a month (an estimated $4-$10 a day).

Total Estimated Annual Revenue (with 20 money sites and 4 directories): $10,800-$14,400
Total Estimated Monthly Revenue (based on above annual revenue/12): $900-$1200
Total Estimated Annual Profit (with 20 money sites and 4 directories): $8,794-$12,394
Total Estimated Monthly Profit (based on above annual profit/12): $733-$1033

A quick couple of things I wanted to help you understand about my costs and why I included them the way I did. The money sites I have all hosted under the same hosting account. The reason for this is that none of these money sites are pointing to each other (they do not get their strength from each other–view the post I made on May 17, 2008 to see an instant look at where they get their strength from). I don’t want to get dinged in the search engines for having a bunch of websites with the same IP address linking to each other–this could be considered link farming. Keeping them all under the same IP and hosting account helps lower my monthly costs.

And for the opposite reason, I have my directories on different hosting accounts. This lets me link them to each other (if it’s the right thing to do), but more importantly it lets my main directory link to my niche directories and my niche directories link to all my adsense sites with no penalties because they come from different IP addresses.

The directory submission is up there because it helps save me incredible amounts of time and in the end will make me more money because of it. And for the same reason, the UGC is up there because it too will help save me time.

Coming This Week:

I will begin to break down these tools for on-page and off-page optimization (see my post on May 28, 2008) for search engine friendly adsense sites. As always, leave your comments. Talk to you soon.

It makes no sense to get into building adsense websites without first having at the very least a basic understanding of how search engine optimization works.

Tools that are of use when it comes to on-page optimization for Search Engine Friendly Adsense Sites are:

Web CEO
Google Sitemaps (kind of)
Instant Article Wizard Pro
Site Report Card

Tools that are of use when it comes to off-page optimization for Search Engine Friendly Adsense Sites are:

SEO for Firefox
Niche Directories
Site Report Card
Link Building (don’t worry I’ll give some tips)
UGC (user-generated content–and don’t worry here either, I’ll give some tips)

Ok, hold on. Here we go!

Before I get into how each one of these can help. Let me just say that you must must must concentrate on your niche directories. Ah yes, the niche directories coming back into play. I talked about those a couple of days ago. Now, they are coming back into play in the context of my writing. Getting these directories up will save you time and money.

Yes, that’s right–the truth you did not want to hear. It’s going to cost you money to get your adsense sites going (if you haven’t already figured that out). I’m going to post soon on the cost of making money with adsense.

Now, I didn’t think I wanted to end this post this soon, but I want to make sure that each one of these tools gets the attention it deserves when it comes to building up your sites. So, I’m going to make a different post for each one of these tools. I’ll try to get these posts up (including the post on the cost of making money with adsense) as soon as possible so hang in there.

But before I go today, let me make sure that you are making sure the keyword that you are optimizing for (on one of your pages within one of your adsense sites) has at the very least these key features:

1) The keyword must be in your title tag
2) The keyword must be in an h1 tag on your page
3) The keyword must be in bold on your page
4) The page that contains the keyword must have an on-site link coming to it with the keyword (i.e. if your keyword on a certain page is “lasagna” make sure that you have a link going to this page with the word “lasagna” in the anchor text.) The html would look like this:

<a href=”/path/to/lasagna-page”>lasagna</a>

The word “lasagna” between the open and close <a> tags is the anchor text. Also this link must be on a page that is visible by search engines. This means that whatever page this link is on must be either the home page (index) of the website or must have a link to it from the home page or another page that is linked to the home page. Remember, search engines are “intelligent” bots and the only way they know that you have a “lasagna” page is because you have links from page-to-page. The page with the link “lasagna” cannot be a stand-alone page. If it is a stand-alone, it will not be found by search engines and, in turn, your “lasagna” page will not be found either.

5) If at all possible, secure a link to your keyword page from another site. Now, pay attention because you could gain an advantage here if you do this correctly. Google has a pagerank system in which they rank the importance of pages on a scale of 1-10 (ten being the highest). The higher pagerank that you can secure a link from the better. Ideally, you would have a topically-related site with a high pagerank link to your keyword page. If your keyword is “lasagna”, a topically-related site could be one that is about “pasta”.

Also, when it comes to pointing to your sites with an outside link, be careful to keep your niche directories on different web servers (or hosts or IP addresses–for purposes of adsense, all mean the same). I have all of my adsense money sites on the same server, but have all of my niche directories on different servers. This way, I do not get “penalized” by Google for having links on the same server pointing to each other. This could be viewed by search engines as link farming (kind of), but more adequately link spamming.

No need to point your money sites to each other. Remember, if you saw the diagram from my earlier post, let your niche directories point to your money sites. Build up your niche directories and they will take care of your money sites.

And, before I go today, just a word, if you are reading this far, pat yourself on the back, you are willing to do more than most. I read an interesting statistic the other day that 65% of adsense publishers are making over $100 per month. I’m not in that category yet, but I know I’m going to be in a short period of time. Are you coming with me? Leave your comments and questions. I’d like to help.